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This week’s Memorable Movie Moment takes us back to director John Sturges‘ 1963 war-era classic, The Great Escape. Set in a POW camp in Nazi Germany, the film follows the true story of a group of Allied prisoners who sought to accomplish the biggest jail break ever conceived, scattering more than 200 Allied troops across the country in an effort to divert Nazi war efforts on finding and re-capturing the escaped soldiers. The Great Escape is famous for a number of reasons. It featured an all-star cast including Steve McQueen (The Cincinnati Kid, The Sand Pebbles), James Garner (The Rockford Files, The Notebook), Richard Attenborough (Jurassic Park, Elizabeth), Charles Bronson (Once Upon A Time In The West, Death Wish), Donald Pleasance (Halloween, Escape From New York), and James Coburn (The Muppet Movie, In Like Flint), several of which were actual POWs with the Allied Forces during World War II. It also set and broke a number of on-screen records, ranging from the scale of the production (an entire replica of a real-life German POW camp was built in which to shoot the film) to the impressive array of stunts. Continue reading →

After the limited release that took place on Christmas Day, writer/director Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight is now playing in theaters nationwide. Starring Samuel L. Jackson (Die Hard with a Vengeance, The Avengers) Kurt Russell (The Thing, Escape from New York), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Road to Perdition, The Machinist), Walton Goggins (The Green Mile, Sons of Anarchy), Tim Roth (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction), Michael Madsen (Free Willy, Kill Bill Vol. 2), and Bruce Dern (Django Unchained ,Nebraska), the film takes place in post Civil War Wyoming, where a group of bounty hunters become trapped in a lodge during a snow storm and end up having to survive both the storm, and each other. Tarantino worked with Oscar-winning composer Ennio Morricone (The Good The Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon A Time in the West) on the new project, Morricone’s first Western film score since the mid-70s, making Hateful Eight the first film of Tarantino’s to feature an all-out theatrical score and not simply a soundtrack. Those that were lucky enough to catch it in theaters last week have reported nothing but great reviews, so even if you’re not a Tarantino or Western-genre fan, I would definitely put this one on your list. The trailer is available one more time on MADE. Enjoy!

Now that the Star Wars bubble has burst, it’s time to look forward to this week’s Christmas Day releases. The first up is one we’ve been waiting for since last Christmas, when a version of the script was leaked and writer/director Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained) was urged to file a lawsuit over the incident. The Hateful Eight is the eighth writing/directing project from Tarantino and is another Western outing that takes place in post-Civil War Wyoming, where a group of bounty hunters are forced to seek shelter from a blizzard, only to find themselves in a game of betrayal and deception. This time out, Tarantino’s stylistic approach to filmmaking will be backed by a full score from Oscar-winning composer Ennio Morricone, whose last Western-film score went to 1975’s A Genius, Two Friends, and an Idiot, but he is more famously known in the Western genre for his contributions to films like A Fistful of Dollars (1964), The Good The Bad and the Ugly (1966), and Once Upon A Time in the West (1968). Continue reading →

2015 will mark the years legendary Italian composer Ennio Morricone makes his return to the western film genre after a 40-year absence. Quentin Tarantino‘s upcoming western The Hateful Eight, out in theaters this December, will feature an original composition by Morricone, who has composed scores for such westerns as A Fistful of Dollars (1964), The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (1966), Once Upon A Time in the West (1968), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), and A Genius, Two Partners, and a Dupe (1975). Morricone will be following up his western composition with the long-awaited drama Voyage of Time from writer/director Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line, The Tree of Life). Malick’s film features actors Brad Pitt (Fightclub, Inglorious Basterds) and Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth, Blue Jasmine) as narrators as he takes the audience on a visual and musical journey to examine the universe. Continue reading →

A new biographical drama titled The 33, based on the book Deep Down Dark by Hector Tobar, is opening in theaters this Friday. The book and film chronicle the Chilean mining accident in 2010, in which 33 miners were trapped underground and survived together for a total of 69 days. Starring in the film are actors Antonio Banderas (The Mask of Zorro, Once Upon A Time in Mexico), Rodrigo Santoro (300, Focus), Juliette Binoche (The English Patient, Godzilla), James Brolin (Traffic, Catch Me If You Can), Jacob Vargas (Get Shorty, Jarhead), and Oscar Nunez (The Office, The Italian Job). Patricia Riggen (Under the Same Moon, Girl in Progress), who received top remarks at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival for her film Family Portrait, directed the project from a screen story by Jose Rivera (Trade, Letters to Juliet). You can see the trailer here on MADE. The movie opens in theaters this Friday.